Bus

Voith Turbo marks 30-year Cummins partnership

This year marks the 30th year of the partnership between Voith Turbo Inc. and Cummins Inc. in North America.

As the service-and-warranty provider for Voith’s DIWA automatic transmission throughout most of North America, Cummins has helped Voith raise the profile of its transmissions throughout the transit market.

“By providing our customers a ‘One Stop Shop’ for all engine/transmission servicing, we have developed long-term relationships with our customers, Voith/Cummins field technicians, Voith/Cummins rebuild centers, Cummins local Management teams and Voith North American teams — all in an effort to deliver best-in-class comprehensive customer service,” explained Dan Hollenbach, region manager, commercial vehicles, for Voith.

Hollenbach added that the company is able to deliver that level of customer service because Voith’s team has developed a long-standing partnership with Cummins in an effort to be easy-to-do-business with.

“In fact, many of our customers site the fact that when they need something they always find our teams responsiveness well beyond their expectations,” he says.

Also new this year is the launch of Voith’s DIWA.6 automatic transmission — the company’s response to the rising demand for clean and fuel-efficient vehicles.

Specifically developed for city buses, DIWA automatic transmissions are the best pre-requisite for economical operations. The DIWA.6 also features a fuel economy increase of up to 16%.

Apart from utilizing the topography-dependent gear-shifting program SensoTop, the increased fuel efficiency is made possible by the need-based reduction of the operating pressure and an intelligent start-up management that avoids starting against the active service brake. With the optimized Automatic Neutral Shift function the transmission can stay decoupled from the engine for longer, which also saves fuel, according to the company.

“All around the world, Voith’s DIWA automatic transmissions are helping transit agencies operate more reliably, safer and with greater efficiency,” said Hollenbach.

Deliveries of the Buy-America compliant, Altoona-tested clean-diesel coach are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2018. An all-electric version is also in development and will be released in 2020.

Proterra’s 40-foot Catalyst E2 max traveled 1,101.2 miles with 660 kWh of energy storage capacity. For the last three consecutive years, the company has demonstrated improved range and battery performance.

From standard 40-foot buses to high-capacity articulated BRT vehicles, clean diesel to hybrid-electric, and from 100% electric to natural gas propulsion, Nova buses have the capacity to respond to any type of service demand at any time.